This year, I read a first edition book, Wertheimer’s Rethinking the Ethics of Clinical Research, and I wrote down every single typo or other sort of mistake that I found in the book. It was quite an extensive list by the end of it.

I suppose through that effort, I became more sensitive to finding typos wherever I look. I recently re-read a book from my childhood that remains a favourite of mine: The Silver Chair, by C. S. Lewis.

And I found a typo in it. I scanned it and posted it as an image attached to this post.

It’s on p. 122. I’m sort of tempted to go to a library and see if the same typo is in other editions. The edition that I have is the 1995 Scholastic reprint. Can anyone else, who has a copy of another edition of The Silver Chair, find this typo in their copy? I’m really curious as to how widespread this is, and how far back the typo goes.

Is it unique to the 1995 Scholastic edition? Or does this typo go all the way back, unnoticed to Lewis himself?

I’m reading this book on the advice of my supervisor, since he thinks that it will be useful in writing my thesis. He’s very right. It’s the first edition of the book that has been published, and so, as I’ve been reading it, I’ve been keeping a list of the mistakes in spelling, grammar or typography that I find in the book. If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed that I’ve been tweeting the mistakes as I find them, too.

Apparently my supervisor and Wertheimer are academic rivals, and so my supervisor was very pleased to hear that I was doing this. He kindly offered to email it to Wertheimer himself for use in correcting future editions. :)

I’ve finally compiled all the tweets, scraps of paper and other places where I recorded the mistakes I found in “Rethinking.” Here they are:

Today is National Grammar Day. In honour of National Grammar Day, and because grammar is my greatest joy in life, I will give a brief and incomplete list of my favourite grammar- and spelling-related pet peeves, followed by a much shorter list of grammatical mistakes that I’m actually okay with.

Reflexive vs. objective pronouns. Wrong: “You can talk to Peter or myself during the break for clarification.” Right: “You can talk to Peter or me during the break for clarification.”

Subject-object disagreement. Wrong: “She say that there’s a problem.” Right: “She says that there’s a problem.” (Usually this one is just a result of failing to check what you wrote after the fact. It’s still really bothersome to me.)

Modals. Wrong: should of, would of, could of. Right: should have, would have, could have.

The following are two grammatical mistakes that I’m actually okay with. They are technically wrong, but I don’t get upset about them. Probably because they’re both restrictions that were placed on the English language because neither can be translated back into Latin.

Ending a sentence with a preposition. This is something up with which I can put.

Split infinitives. If you want to boldly go there, that’s fine with me.